I Am Not Your Gladiator
by MattHoenn
Summary: When she entered remnant, reborn as a child, all she had left was the fight. So she fought, until she realized her propensity for escalation and conflict did nothing but harm. After years trying to live in peace, fleeing from one conflict to the next instead of fighting, Taylor is offered a scholarship under extremely unorthodox circumstances. A scholarship to Beacon academy.
1. Tired of Fighting

_**Prologue: A Mistral Police Dept. Questioning Room**_

"You aren't a cop." A rasping voice called out to the man standing in the doorway.

"Of course I'm not." With a smile, he stepped further into the room and sat down across from the girl. Getting his first good look at her. The footage he had been working off of was of questionable quality, and Ozpin sincerely hoped this wasn't a case of mistaken identity.

The girl had a wild mane of short black hair and blue eyes. She was rail thin, and her clothes seemed to have gone far too long without a thorough washing. An all too common occurrence among less fortunate communities in the City of Mistral.

"Who are you then? Lawyer?" She didn't look up from the table when she spoke. Her voice dripping with false courage and rebellion.

"Not a police officer, not a lawyer. I'm the headmaster of Beacon Academy." After giving his non-answer the man laid out a series of objects on the table between them with unexpected speed. After everything was neatly arranged, he put both his palms up and looked her straight in the eye. "In full transparency, I'm giving you these things because I want you to trust me. I want to help you."

The first object the girl picked up was a key, after a moment of fiddling it slipped into each of her handcuffs and released her wrists with two satisfying _clicks_.

As the girl rubbed away the marks on her wrists, her gaze settled on the second object set in front of her. A silver thermos. She grasped the handle and unscrewed the cap, revealing what appeared to be hot chocolate.

With a huff, she set down the thermos, forgoing coco in favor of examining the last two objects on the table.

The girl first picked up an ornate looking dagger, about as long as her forearm with a wickedly curved edge.

"It's fake," The man began, "The steel isn't folded, also-"

The girl interrupted him with a voice that was quiet. "It isn't impregnated with dust, and it can't absorb aura to be made stronger." The girl deftly slipped it into a sheath that was already clipped to her belt. Once the dagger was put away, the girl sat back, keeping one hand at her side below the table.

Ozpin didn't have to wait long for the girl to acknowledge the fourth object on the table.

Simple and rugged, about as long as her arm and rendered almost completely useless by a leather strap tightly bound around the cross guard so that it couldn't be drawn. A sturdy cutting edge, and the type of blade Ozpin knew to be commonly used by the slave gladiators of Mistral.

The girl picked her sword up gingerly, slowly running a finger along the leather that held it in place. Paying careful attention to the knot, tugging lightly on the loose ends to make sure it was tight.

On the surface, everything about the girl was unremarkable. her hair was plain. She was lanky, but not more so than an average teen.

The sword they were both eyeing was equally forgettable. Not long, not short, not wide, not thin.

But that leather strap...

The man concealed the activation of his glasses behind the act of pushing them up his nose. He watched as aura and something more pulsed and writhed around that leather strap, similar in shape to the knot itself.

He could have gazed at its beauty for a long long time, but luckily the girl spoke up, "Alright, what do you want from me? What's your angle for swooping in and handing me all my stuff back?" She wrinkled her nose and glanced at the thermos on the table, "Plus some hot coco."

The man smiled a bit and produced a tablet from his briefcase and handed it to the girl. "The combat course in Beacon is quite selective, so selective that the school runs background checks and investigations into each and every student that we accept. I was surprised to find an assault had occurred on one of the more affluent prospective students. So someone was naturally dispatched to investigate."

While explaining, he pulled up a video of the girl trying to steal a truck of some kind off the side of the road. A group of two other young women intervened, and a brief fight broke out between them. The outnumbered girl hesitated to leave the truck behind, but was ultimately forced to run.

The girl winced at the image of herself getting knocked out of the truck and across the parking lot by the oldest woman of the attacking pair.

"I don't see how getting my face kicked in by one of your students makes me worth a visit." She shifted in her seat, looking anywhere but directly at him.

"An associate of mine recognized you." She stiffened in her seat. "Some of his more... Unpleasant jobs have made him quite familiar with the Mistralian pit fighting industry."

Ozpin stopped and replayed the footage from the beginning, "So when I sent him to learn more about the fight one of Beacon's student-to-be had gotten themselves in... he and I both found ourselves rather confused."

He motioned at and paused during certain points of the video as he made his speech, "Never once did you fight back. You dodged and ran around the truck, you jumped back in and tried to start it again, only to be pushed back out. Not a single time did you reach for your sword, not even for that useless dagger."

The girl's voice interrupted his thoughts, shaking with an emotion he couldn't quite place, "Are you here to put me back in the ring?" As she looked up at him from behind her hair, Ozpin realized it was anger. "You're wasting your time, I've fought enough for two lifetimes."

Ozpin took a sip of coffee and told her the truth.

"Oh **Taylor**, I don't want to make you a Gladiator again. I'm here to offer you a scholarship."


	2. Reasons To Stay

The tour guide droned on about how the immense height of Beacon Tower necessitated the fastest and most powerful elevator in the world. I had tuned out long ago, in fact I was beginning to question why I hadn't ditched this school tour a while ago. When I had asked what I was supposed to do with my new freedom, Ozpin had helpfully suggested I sleep in the dorms for the night, and take a school tour in the morning.

I still wasn't even close to sure what I was doing here.

A couple of teens, who had loudly proclaimed that they were vacationing, "All the way from Mistral!" walked over to me with a camera in hand.

"Hey!" The taller boy with gray hair called out to me, "Would you mind taking a picture of us with the elevator guy?" He jerked his thumb behind him, pointing to an obviously embarrassed looking operator.

I looked at the elevator guy.

He shook his head.

I looked at the gray haired dude.

He gestured to the camera in his other hand.

I looked at the green haired girl to his side.

She smiled and waved.

Just as she was about to introduce herself, I walked away.

The elevator was around thirty feet wide at the most, and it was already filled with people, so the rest of the trip up was pretty awkward.

Luckily, not only was this the largest elevator I had ever been in, it was also (as advertised) the fastest. Still being asked incessant questions by the couple, about how the elevator worked, and which buttons did what, the operator was eager to finish our trip, so he inched a blue lever forward just a bit more to expedite our ascent. The doors open up, and eventually everyone was out on the roof.

I had questioned the necessity of such a grandiose look-out tower when I had been guided around it on the ground. Now that I could truly take in the dominant view of Vale, I understood why people from hundreds of years ago had gone through the effort. If it weren't for the walls that had since been built to shore up the mountainous cities few weak entry points, I could have looked out into the countryside and seen any significant mass of Grim as it formed. The headmaster's office being on one of the lower floors of this building made sense, considering back then it would have been the closest to any new information on Grim activity.

After around 15 minutes at the top of the world we were shepherded back into the elevator and down to the earth.

—

Conveniently the guide had pointed out which floor was occupied by the headmaster in Beacon Tower. So when the rest of the group had dispersed, I walked straight back to the tower and asked the elevator operator to bring me there.

A kind woman greeted me from behind a desk and I didn't have to wait very long before Ozpin opened his door.

Walking in, I realized that the headmaster's office took up almost the entire floor. Large machines of clockwork and gears filled every corner, but the sheer size of the room meant it didn't feel cramped.

I lingered on the machinery for a moment, before taking a seat in one of the chairs closest to Ozpin's desk. Although I did have to turn it around so it was facing him.

The other chair had been knocked over.

"Was your stay in the dorms alright? The school year doesn't start until tomorrow and I'm afraid it's dreadfully lonely on campus without students." Ozpin said. He was trying to start our first meeting since he sprung me from the police station with smalltalk, but I wasn't having it.

"Why should I stay here?" I asked, crossing my arms. I had been traveling across Remnant for years, living a retired life. Though not without the occasional run-in with chaos.

Getting in trouble with a school though? This was definitely a first.

Ozpin cleared his throat, not even the slightest thrown off by my direct question. "As far as I can understand, you don't have anything better to do." He said.

I raised my eyebrow. "You might be right, but that doesn't tie me here either."

"You've bounced from city to city since you escaped, getting entangled in some sort of chaos over and over again." Ozpin said, pausing and scrolling through something on his computer that I couldn't see. I wondered exactly how much of his knowledge of me was based around rumors and urban legend. "But everytime the situation gets even a bit severe, you run. Leaving a mess behind for the rest of the world to deal with."

I decided I'd heard enough of my own history and interrupted him, "So you should know I'm not exactly fond of fighting. Everything seems to just escalate around me, no matter how hard I try to find a place to rest."

Despite my best efforts I always got in some form of trouble. I idly ran my fingers over the knot that held my sword in place, as I thought about how little there seemed to be holding me back from falling back into the mindset I had climbed out of.

Ozpin smiled, "It seems to me that you're going to be fighting whether you want to or not. Some people just have to, I've trained enough hunters to know the type." I frowned, and Ozpin continued. "Too many people know your name belongs to a gladiator for you to live a quiet life. But not so many that you couldn't also be known as a great huntress. I think you'll find that fighting the grimm comes on a more predictable schedule than running and fighting people."

My frown deepened, Ozpin's smile widened. The unspoken implication of his statement was that I'd find even more trouble waiting for me if I chose to walk out of Beacon's gates. All he would have to do is tell the right people where I was. He could also be legitimately offering me help, but I knew better than to assume that.

"I guess you've got me figured out. But what do you want from me?" If he didn't want me to fight for him, what could he possibly believe I could do that others couldn't? "Last I checked, tuition for any combat academy ran pretty high." I lied, I had never once looked at _any_ academy's prices, but it had to be expensive right?

Ozpin seemed to think for a moment before looking at me sincerely. "Miss Hebert, you wouldn't trust me even if I told you the truth. Just know that I am not trying to be your enemy." my new headmaster said.


	3. Orientation

"Actually one of my friends is here right now!"

The blonde girl's eyes locked onto mine as I was walking by.

Shit.

Like a python, her muscular arm snapped out and wrapped around my shoulders. She was a lot stronger than she looked, and I was being half dragged/half carried away from the main entrance before I knew it.

After a few seconds of her frantically running, and me being partially dragged behind, I was released. Damn she had a firm grip. My captor glanced around the corner to (I assume) make sure she hadn't been followed before turning back to me and stretching out a hand. "Thanks for going along with that, sometimes I just need a bit of a break from my sister, my name's Yang."

I cocked my head to the side and regarded her hand carefully before finally taking it.

A lengthy conversation was the last thing I wanted. So I did my best to give her the cold shoulder. "I didn't exactly have a choice in the matter." I said. Hoping she'd get the hint and leave me alone. My eyes lingered on the polished gold bangle hanging off of her outstretched wrist as we shook hands.

Yang didn't miss the opportunity to show off. With a quick shake, and a flex of aura, she activated the folding frame mechanisms within. She looked up from our still joined hands and cocked an eyebrow, "Like what you see? I made them myself."

Yang started walking away from the corner and in the opposite direction of her sister. I stood stock still, hoping she would forget about me, to my dismay she didn't.

"C'mon, we need to get to the atrium before my sister does."

In almost any other situation like this I'd walk the other way.

Unfortunately, I had no idea where the atrium was, and it probably wouldn't be good if I started skipping on the first day.

Yang talked all the way to the assembly hall, hardly seeming to notice my silence, and sat down next to me. Fortunately she didn't try much conversation once we'd arrived, keeping her focus almost entirely on the large doors leading into the hall.

"Ruby! Over here! I saved you a spot!" After a brief period without her talking, Yang sprang from her seat and moved to collect a rather disheveled looking version of the girl we'd seen before.

I stood to the side as Yang got an accounting of her sister's time away from her. They didn't look like sisters at all, but maybe one of them was dying their hair? I didn't know, and frankly I didn't care all that much. I was turning to walk away, taking advantage of Yang's distraction, when disaster struck yet again.

"You!" A white haired demon screeched, barreling toward us.

"Oh god it's happening again!" Ruby squeaked in fear and hid behind her taller sister.

I groaned and started to make my escape.

The pale girl decided to completely ignore Ruby in exchange for me. She blew past the two sisters and into my personal space. "How on earth did YOU of all people manage to get into Beacon academy?"

I stayed silent for the most part as she ranted and raved. Although this certainly wasn't as bad as the last time I'd met this stuck up bitch, I wouldn't object to being just about anywhere but here.

Weiss seemed to run out of spite, and Yang took the opportunity to step into the extremely small space between us. "It seems like you guys all just got off on the wrong foot." She grabbed Ruby, who had been slowly creeping away from the group (smart), and glanced back and forth between the three of us expectantly.

Weiss' rage regrouped for another tirade, this time aimed at Ruby.

_Who even uses the word 'dolt' anymore?_

The 'dolt' shifted a bit before holding out her hand and re-introducing herself in a pathetically awkward way.

Ruby's noble sacrifice gave me the chance I needed, I walked away as quickly as I could to the other side of the room and sat down somewhere else.

Away from people. Thank God.

Ozpin gave some sort of speech about the future and our potential being wasted. I don't exactly remember because I started to doze off.

"Hey! Yang's friend!"

I woke with a start and swiftly smacked away the hand poking me in the face.

"Eep!" Ruby jumped back.

"I was just gonna let you know that we're all supposed to set up our sleeping bags and stuff, apparently the team assignment and entrance ceremony stuff is getting delayed until tomorrow while the teachers make sure it's 'safe', whatever that means." It seemed to take her an immense amount of courage to keep talking to me rather than running away. So I gave her a nod and went to find a good spot.

All the spots close to the walls and in corners were taken up, although that might be a blessing in disguise. Ruby and Yang were seeking out the antisocial, a girl in black nightclothes had laid out her bedding along the wall and was now being ambushed. Maybe the best way to avoid people would be to hide in plain sight?

I set down my bag and rolled out my sleeping mat right in the middle of the large room.

The lights went out soon after.


End file.
